Ghosts and Shadows
by SkySong2
Summary: A KOTOR2 drable series.
1. Ghosts and Shadows

**Ghosts and Shadows**

It was Revan's ship, Revan's droids, Revan's Admiral, Revan's Jedi, Revan's Mandalorian, Revan's master, Revan's assassin, Revan's battlefields. Revan's plans, Revan's loose ends, Revan's mess. Revan's voice echoed in the Ebon Hawk, Revan's footsteps lingered on Korriban. Revan's fingers were directly in Handmaiden's past, and indirectly in Mira's. Bao-Dur had been assigned to the Exile by Revan.

Malachor V was practically Revan's own personal planet. Yes, the Exile had pulled the trigger. Bao-Dur had built the proverbial gun. But it had been Revan's idea in the first place.

Everything the Exile had, was Revan's. Revan's imprint was on everything.

Except for Mical. He was the _Exile's_ disciple.


	2. Proud

**Proud**

It is not until the Exile first sees the Disciple lift and hold a live, shrieking kath hound in a whirlwind (five minutes, the Disciple held it for _five minutes_, a few weeks prior he couldn't lift so much as a datapad) does the Exile understand that feeling that sometimes surges down the bond the Exile shares with Kreia.

They both – Kreia and the Exile – are terribly proud of their students.


	3. Guardian

**Guardian**

The jedi had an artificial habit of dividing themselves. Initiate, padawan, knight, master. Consular, sentinel, guardian. Other obscure but equally meaningless discriminations had fallen out of use or been lost to time. Some referred to skill, others to hierarchy, but to Visas there were only two true and distinct roles: master and servant. (The Disciple disagreed. He claimed there were only 'teacher and student' and that the relationship was convoluted. Visas suspected the Disciple was touched in the head, or had eaten something the Scoundrel had given him.)

But when Visas found herself down, unable to stand on the Skybridge and the Exile leapt over her to scatter the soldiers, Visas couldn't help but think that perhaps "The Guardian" would have been a more appropriate moniker.


	4. Instinct

**Instinct**

Something is wrong. Arren Kae knows this in the way she knows there is a stranger in the house, the way she knows the baby has died. It is not a quiver in the force, a crude echo of cause and effect and soon-to-cause-and-effect. The force screams constantly now, and any finesse in reading its signals can take hours, days, weeks. And the force can lie, just as any living creature lies, in order to push things in the direction it intends.

No, this feeling is instinct. Honed from before humanity used the force and never truly lost, despite becoming dependant on machines and artificial means. Something is wrong, and locked away in her own self-imposed exile, dead to the galaxy, the feeling lingers for months. It takes months, for Arren to learn her student has returned, and that Revan's opening gambit was to slay her lover.

Nearly a decade later, Kreia stands and leaves the Ebon Hawk. There is no tremor in the force, no echo down her bond. But she knows something is wrong.


	5. Full Circle

**Full Circle**

Life is cyclical. This is obvious, intuitive. Like knowing there is air because one breathes, knowing one has a heart because it beats. So it perplexes Mical when a master gives a lecture to the initiates on Coruscant about cycles. It perplexes him further when he realizes his age mates haven't noticed this yet. Apprentices grow up to become masters and take on apprentices of their own. Children grow up, have children, pass on, and then _their_ children grow up. Spring becomes summer becomes fall becomes winter becomes spring. Ice becomes water becomes gas becomes water becomes ice.

The Exile leaves, there is no master for Mical-apprentice. In turn, Mical never becomes a master.

History is cyclical. There is evidence, however fragmentary. Civilizations rise and fall. War gives to peace gives to war. Corruption grows and is uprooted. Knowledge is lost then found. Mical hopes to find, to preserve, against what promises to be a long cycle of darkness, some fragments of the light for when the cycle turns.

The Exile returns, the cycle turns, and a decade late he is the Disciple. But he is not surprised.

The Force is cyclical. Darkness gives way to light gives way to darkness. The dead return through the force. They go, to the places the Exile had been, ten years ago. To places the Scoundrel, the Handmaiden, the Hunter, the Blind Seer, the Mechanic, the Mandalorian, have tread and bled. Even the Disciple has his place in this cycle. Even the Teacher – one who is neither sith nor jedi but who dwells in the transitions of the cycle – whose death shows the cycle turns.

The Exile leaves. The Disciple tries to explain this to his spiritual brother-sisters (Scoundrel, Handmaiden, Mechanic, Hunter, Seer), but they do not understand and do not believe. Like children, like masters, like seasons, they have arisen from a period of darkness, a period of war. The cycle turns again to peace and they are the masters now. The dead and the lost will reappear. The Disciple has seen this before.

Life, history, the force, is cyclical. The Exile will return.


	6. What Does Not Change

**What Does Not Change**

"Why is it always 'General' with you anyway?" Atton welds a plate back into place on the Ebon Hawk and does not look up.

The storms on Dxun have not changed and Bao-Dur is grateful the internal insulation of the Ebon Hawk was not damaged. The important pieces are whole. "Going into exile did not stop the General from being one."


	7. Learning Curve

**Learning Curve**

It's a lot of blood, and how strongly it smelled was something of a surprise. He was used to seeing people dead by blaster fire. Bolts that cauterized wounds and smelled like something left in the oven for too long, instead of fresh and sticky and wet. Reminded him a bit like sex, really. That warm wet place between a woman's legs.

Mikhail was throwing up in a corner.

An older soldier watched them both, his expression inscrutable. The soldier must have mistaken Jaq's trance, because he just shook his head. "Don't worry kid, it gets easier."

Which was a damn weird thing to say. Jaq couldn't imagine it getting any easier. It wasn't hard at all.


	8. Looking But Not Seeing

**Looking But Not Seeing**

Everyone looked, and when people were looking at her chest, that meant they weren't looking at what her hands were doing. From a certain standpoint it would be more practical to wear a solid vest that would protect her vital organs, except Mira had decided long ago that if she _needed_ to take steps to protect her soft fleshy bits, she'd fucked up at some point.

That she was still smooth and scar free said a lot about how infrequently Mira fucked up.

So they all looked. Atton was a no brainer, he oogled anything with tits and Mira was half convinced Atton was trying to insult his way out of ever getting laid again. Visas had only expressed doubt about the effectiveness of Mira's technique. The Disciple looked, in an academically detached way that Mira found to be at odds with how the Disciple would sometimes tilt his head _just_ so when pulling a vibroblade out of someone. The Exile looked, if only to raise an eyebrow that said all the Exile wanted to say. Even the Handmaiden (What was with some of these people and their aversion to giving a name? _Any_ name? Even a fake one?) looked, and that was saying something when it came from a woman who spent most of her time doing flips in her underwear.

Everyone looked. Except Bao-Dur. Mira wasn't sure if that was an insult or a challenge.


End file.
